Sandwich of the day - the jammie piece

 Bread (I used the heel of a freshly bought loaf, which is generally OK for this type of thing) butter and jam.    I used damson.  Marmalade is also quite good on a piece.  I'm with Paddington there.

I quite understand that this level of cuisine is beyond most people's capabilities but go on, have a go at it.  You might surprise yourself.

Musical Memories

 'Nobody wants to know about the Canterbury school of prog Tuppence.   It's like from the dark ages,' said Val Nark,  shaking the dregs of a goji berry and chia seed smoothie on to an 'own-made' gravel flapjack. 'You don't seem to realise your terrible taste in music is why your band-mates abandoned you. Well, partly, anyway.  I'm sure your awful personality and penchant for random shootings didn't help.  Life moves on.   You need to up your game.'

'Oh really.  Any ideas?'

'Maybe move into the 90s or something.  What about doing some covers of the Verve or the Stone Roses?'

'I thought maybe Simple Minds?'

'The Minds were shit!' spluttered Val.  Shards of gravel flapjack ricocheted off the window of Val's eco-cafe. 'For pity's sake.  They were the 1980s anyway.  Which was all totally shit.   You really have no musical knowledge whatsoever.'

'They were indeed shit,' said Dave, as he fried a plant-based burger on the compressed-wood-dust-fired stove.  'And I should know.  I was their first drummer, till I left through mutual agreement.  Just before they got their recording contract.'

'You got fired then.'

'No.  It was through mutual agreement, like I said.  They said I was great but just not a good fit for them at that time.  I'd be better off moving on and looking for something else that showed my talents off to the full.'

'Fired.'

'No. They said they didn't actually need a drummer at that time and I'd only be bored with nothing to do.'

'Fired.'

'No.  They said I was perfect for the band and a great drummer,  only not right now with them kind of thing.  It was all good,  I was fine with it.  I was totally thrilled for them when they started having massive chart success.  Ow!'  Dave burned his fingers flipping the burger and adding a slice of vegan cheese-style topping.  'Shit.  That's the finger I use to press 'record' when I'm doing my wildlife vids.'

'Let's face it they were a shower of bastards Dave,' said Val briskly.  'Dark days.  But we moved on, didn't we? We coped.  We thrived!  I picked you up out of the gutter, and forced you to face the world again.  And here we are!  Living the good life on a croft-style place in Scotland, renting out yurts and selling eco-goods and putting wildlife vids online and stuff.   If Jim Kerr ever turns up,  he'll get the doing of his life.'

Next time - Jim Kerr turns up and gets the doing of his life

Watching Toads is better than the Telly

Toad in the compost bin

All I watch on TV is Walker Texas Ranger relentlessly roundhouse-kicking the crap out of wrong-doers in a ginger wig and the bizarre cheese-fest which is the Six Million Dollar Man. If there's a Gerard Butler film on after that I count myself lucky.   Obviously I don't have a smart TV or Netflix - which is probably just as well for my health because if I did, I'd probably never get off the sofa again with the array of new films and fancy series available.  Whereas the old channels only have a desperate load of recycled rubbish I'd have to be heavily sedated to watch.

This is possibly another consequence of getting old.  You've already seen most of the garbage they churn out.  So, failing anything better being available such as a glossy series on Netflix, you might as well return to the 'source', i.e. the programmes previously mentioned.

I do keep an eye on what's on, ever hopeful, but generally there's nothing that appeals.   Obviously, news programmes are completely unwatchable now.  Which is an odd state of affairs.  

I probably wouldn't mind watching geriatrics' soothing favourite, the Antiques Roadshow, but the husband puts his foot down, and I give in because I'm not that bothered anyway.  I'd be keener on an Antiques Toadshow, presented by David Fattenborough,  an earnest, pastry-loving nature freak who when he isn't presenting programmes about ancient amphibians likes fattening up boroughs.  

A year or two back there were toads in our garden.  They lived in the compost bin and hibernated underneath it (see photo, of toad emerging from hibernation).  Now we have mainly frogs.  I really miss opening the compost bin and being confronted by a large toad (see photo).  They are extraordinary creatures, and far more interesting to watch than the telly.   

Toad, emerging from hibernation

Haggis Bonbons

The coracle (kindly designed by BW Nicol)

'Alexa's been spending a lot of time over at Tupfinder Towers lately,' said Geoffrey as he fried up our Sunday breakfast of sausages, black pudding, bacon, eggs, kidneys and festive haggis 'bon bons'.  The bonbons were bought off the  reduced shelf at Speedispend hypermarket and compulsory screening centre when we made a fleeting and probably ill-advised visit recently. As readers will know, we dislike Speedispend, but on this occasion we were desperate, because the Tunnels are currently empty, due to the foodbank comestibles having been moved to a 'safer location'  (I can't imagine why they would feel the need to do that...).  So, we got out the coracle and made the voyage over.   

'Yes, and so has Tuppence.  He's been upset about his band.  They want to play decent gigs but all they can get are care homes and kiddie's birthday parties.  That's why he's been drinking so much.  He's depressed and humiliated and he's worried it's affecting his actual brain chemistry on a permanent basis. And no wonder.  He wants to play Madison Square Garden but he's got Bide a Wee care facility instead.'

'It's a shame that Stormy won't allow him back into the Puff Inn.  Those Friday night gigs were great.  A few purple perils and Tuppence's rendition of Egg's 'A Visit to Newport Hospital'.  Them were the days.'

'Yes.  Indeed they were Geoffrey.  But you can appreciated his position given that tine that Tuppence overloaded the electrics with his Moog and burned the place to the ground.  The rats were problematic as well, to be fair.'

'Well if you will have rats rather than actual bandmates.  You need to use a long spoon if you sup with the devil, and Tuppence clearly did not.  By the way did you really say 'problematic'?'

'I think your bonbons are burning Geoffrey.  I told you to put them in the pan last, they're much smaller than the other stuff and TAKE THEM OUT NOW YOU'RE RUINING THEM.'

Next time - Tuppence is convinced he can smell an old person before he sees them and wonders if he can monetise this startling new ability.  Alexa continues to seek help from the star as she struggles with her existential and moral dilemmas

  

Tune of the Day - Warren Zevon - My Shit's Fucked Up

This is a splendid song,  splendidly performed, on the theme of ageing.  Short and concise.  Unfortunately only available if you click through to Youtube, because of the sweary words presumably.  How fucking stupid is that.  You can watch 'pron' of every possible variety, practically anywhere (which we are led to believe is all fine and dandy - reader, for a number of reasons, it isn't, and I may write about why, later) but you can't listen to the words of a song.

Anyway.  I recommend that you do listen to it.   I've been worrying about my shit getting fucked up i.e. the implications of ageing for about, hmmmm....maybe twelve or thirteen years.  I started worrying when I really didn't need to.  I  thought I was old, but I wasn't, I was merely middle-aged.  Now I've crossed a line where I really am pretty old, it's a different game altogether now and I worry far less about the fucked up shit than I did back then.  Because I'm still here and I appreciate how lucky I am to have made it this far without falling off the ledge.

Life is so weird.  Gloriously so.  I try to live in the moment and I feel blessed to be alive.

Hell on the Toilet

'I think I'm turning into one of these people who can't eat salad.  It just makes the next day hell on the toilet.  I just can't seem to wipe myself clean at all, even with Andrex Washlets, it just goes on and on.  And on.  You won't know about these things yet dear,  you're much too young.  You've got it all in front of you!  or should I say, behind!'  Mrs T-G grinned, and her false teeth 'bridge' fell out, revealing a solitary brown tooth to which it had been attached with a piece of chewing gum.  'Oops.   Do help yourself to a black sausage roll and here's some of my special squash.'  

Mrs T-G poured some of the plopping, steaming green liquid into a cracked ceramic mug, with 'World's Best Dad' emblazoned on the side.   The mug split open and the squash splashed onto the wooden floor, immediately burning a hole in it.

'Oh.  Well, it was a charity shop mug so no great loss.   I'll fetch you another.'  Mrs T-G clomped towards the spiral staircase.  She turned at the first step, and said,' Perhaps the squash is a bit on the strong side.  Perhaps I should add some more fluids.  Toad milk might help with the acidity.  I think I have some in the pantry.'

Alexa returned swiftly to the telescope. 'Well?' she asked, silently, as the star appeared.  'Do I help Mrs T-G with her beastly Kantian paradigm, and drink her beastly toad milk, or do I do more cleaning for Val beastly Nark?  Or should I just run away perhaps. I don't want to be a slave to money till I die. I don't think I even want to go to uni.   There has to be a better way to live, that doesn't involve entering a nunnery or some ghastly sandals and wholegrain communal living type situation.  I can't face a lifetime of wage slavery.  I just can't.'

The star twinkled sympathetically.

'I think you're the only one I can talk to and you're not even a person.  You're a star and you're so far away you might not even exist any more.  You might only be a ray of light.  Life is so lonely sometimes.'

Next time - Alexa's boyfriend Tuppence has too much to drink and declares that he was once in the SAS, but nobody believes him.  And Alexa has some major decisions to make.

Alexa consults the telescopic oracle

 Alexa peered into the eyepiece.   A bright star twinkled at her from somewhere deep in the vast Magellanic Cloud.

'Wow this is awesome.   I feel like my entire body is going to be sucked right through the telescope towards the star eyeball first but it's prob'ly only my immortal soul or whatever.   It kind of makes two weeks in Lanzarote seem very tame and pointless,' she thought.  'I wonder if I should bin my Onlyfans career...I don't like to admit it but I don't like it...wait is that star getting brighter?  Yes it is...OK so this is kind of a celestial two blinks for yes, one blink for no kind of deal, which is totally fine.  So, should I just not do Onlyfans?  I'd never admit it out loud but it doesn't feel right.  Imagine if Mr Stevens the dairy produce manager at Speedispend saw me.   Or even the Tupfinder General!  I can't bear the thought of that.  Yes  I  think I should just bin it.'

The star twinkled even more brightly and seemed to dance a little.

'But if I bin it,  I'd have to do even more hours as a cleaner.  And I don't think I could hack that.'

The star faded disapprovingly.

'Or perhaps I could...'

The star brightened a little.

'Should I...?'

CRUMP CRUMP CRUMP

The star vanished.

Someone heavy-footed was climbing the spiral staircase.  The door creaked open and Mrs Tupfinder General appeared carrying a tray of steaming black sausage rolls and a large jug of murky, bilious green liquid which plopped and bubbled and seemed to be producing some type of noxious gas.

'I thought you might like a refreshment.  Consulting the telescope can be draining.  By the way Alexa,  I happen to be looking for someone to help me with some written work I'm doing.  It's a monograph on the Kantian hermeneutic paradigm and its irruption through the symbolic order and I need someone who can work a computer and basically type the bastard out for me.  Val Nark says you're quite reliable for a young person.   Not that I pay any attention to what she says but I was wondering if you might be available?  I will pay real cash money.'

Alexa stared at the blank spot where the star had been.  'Well?' she asked, silently and in trepidation...

Next time - Alexa and Mrs T-G engage in discussions about mirrors and the authentic self - plus, why the star cannot cope with Mrs T-G, and why cheese footballs are only ever available at Christmas time except at Home Bargains.

Today's tune - Velvet Morning - thoughts

I absolutely love love love this song.  Going back to the age thing, what awes me especially and what I find totally remarkable is that someone as young as Richard Ashcroft was when he wrote this, could produce something so evocative and relatable for someone...well I was going to say 'of my age', however this song was written thirty years ago and I'm just ten years older than him, so...I wouldn't have ben that much older at the time.

This is getting overly complicated and I need another gallon of tea before I sort it out to have it make sense.    Having said that, perhaps it shows that there is surely an eternal thread that runs through us all and connects us regardless of where we happen to be on the space/time continuum.  

As you might notice I'm still very much in a 'Verve' and 'Virginia Woolf'  phase.  There are worse places, to be fair.   I will move on eventually...

Sandwich of the day - tomato

This is possibly my favourite sandwich.  What else can you say about a tomato sandwich except that it is what it is.  A sandwich, made with tomatoes.  

Or, as some say here in Scotland - 'tima(tt)aes'.

Roger Waters Mother The Wall Live at Berlin

This is just a wonderful song and a wonderful performance.  I do love Sinead.

Just read - To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)

 

This is such an amazing and wonderful book.   Actually it's more of an immersive experience than a book.  I didn't expect to enjoy it,  I approached it with caution, but I loved it and am sure I'll read it again.  I've now bought Mrs Dalloway and will read that next.  I'm also concurrently reading Angela Garnett's Deceived by Kindness, about her life growing up in the strange world of the Bloomsbury set.    It reads in a way very much like To the Lighthouse, and I am sure that Mrs Ramsay must have been based on Vanessa Bell.  

I'm sure this must have been discussed and written about ad infinitum, but I rarely read forewords and introductions,  I never read exegeses,  because I don't want to know what some supposedly learned person says I SHOULD think about a book.  I want to experience the book for myself, first hand, with no mental clutter.

Favourite quote from To the Lighthouse (regarding a witnessing of Mrs Ramsay's changing state of mind) 'something clear as the space which the clouds at last uncover -the little space of sky which sleeps beside the moon.'

What more can I say?   I love it.

Bevvy of the week - brandy

 Because sometimes it's necessary.   

Questionable Time at Tupfinder Towers

 

the T-G

'CRUMP CRUMP CRUMP'.

Tuppence thumped on the two feet thick, iron-studded oak door with his fists.

'CRUMP CRUMP - ugh.  I'm knackered.'

'No wonder.  You've been banging on that door for ten minutes.  Maybe if you stopped shouting CRUMP CRUMP at the same time as banging it wouldn't be so tiring though.'

'That's easy for you to say standing there eating - what is it?  It looks like wood.'

'It's one of Val's gravel flapjacks.  Want some?'

'No.'

'How will they ever hear us,' said Alexa.  'Look at the size of the place.'

Above them, vanishing into the clouds, loomed a towering ivy-covered Tower - the only remaining Tower at Tupfinder Towers.  The other three collapsed so long ago that nobody could remember when or why - not even the Tupfinder General, or Mrs Tupfinder General, with a combined age of nine hundred and forty two.  Piles of abandoned rubble indicated their previous location.

'Yes.  Stuff this.'  Tuppence whipped out his pistol and began shooting.  Bullets whistled through the air and lodged themselves into the centuries-old oak making barely a dent.  A few ricocheted off the iron studs and flew who knew where, only a few random screams indicating that they had landed 'somewhere'.

CREEEEEEEAAAAAAAKKKKKKKK

The door swung open slowly, and a shotgun barrel waved them inside.

'A bit of target practice never did anyone any harm,' roared the T-G. 'Come inside.'

They asked what had happened to the other three towers.

'Perhaps the Old Tup might have known,' mused the Tupfinder, waving an arm at a dusty oil painting depicting someone almost identical in appearance to the Tupfinder General, except with white hair, cross-eyes and a kilt.  Oh and only the one cloven hoof.  'He lived to a decent age.  Four thousand and fifty I think it was.  Anyway.  Perhaps you'd like to visit Mrs T-G's laboratory.  Where she makes her black sausage rolls.  No?  Then perhaps we can go to the observatory on the upper floor and you can have a shot of my inter-galactic supra-space-time-dimension telescope.  It's so pleasing to have young visitors for a change'.  He continued ushering Tuppence and Alexa up the vast staircase. 

'Come along,' he beckoned,  his cloven hooves clip-clopping on the wooden floor as he made his way  briskly along a narrow book-lined corridor with an even narrower spiral staircase at the far end. 

'Why do you have cloven hooves T-G,' asked Alexa. 'I'm quite envious it's a strong look.'

'Like long noses, they run in the family,' he replied. 'Here we are.'

He opened a door at the top of the spiral staircase revealing a room evidently at the top of the Tower.  A large telescope occupied much of the space.  He pressed a lever and a humming sound filled the room

The telescope began to rotate.

'This is a special telescope.  It can be used in the usual way, to look at the stars and such-like, but you can also ask it questions.  For example, you, young lady, are wondering whether now is the right time to quit your job as a cleaner, and if Onlyfans is going to provide you with a sufficient revenue stream to see you through uni and maybe have a couple of weeks in Lanzarote.'

'H-how did you know that?'  

The T-G smiled mysteriously.  'I have certain powerful listening devices set up in various locations.  It's part of my supervisory role as Tupfinder General.   Anyway - gaze into the eyepiece and focus your mind on your question...'

Next time - Alexa gazes questioningly into the eyepiece and focuses her mind on her question...Tuppence questions the legality of the Tupfinder General's questionable 'listening devices'....

Sandwich of the week - peanut butter, marmite, cheese, and lime and chilli pickle

 

Peanut butter (crunchy), marmite, cheese, and lime and chilli chutney.   Sometimes I might lose the cheese and add a banana.  Or I might have both.  Either way it's a good sandwich for when you're starving.  I used Lurpak spreadable again.  I think ordinary butter would be too much, with the peanut butter and the cheese.  

Oldness

 'You know what Val Nark's so vain', said Alexa.   'I heard her talking to herself in the mirror before I smashed it.   She's totally jealous of Mrs T-G. it's so random, they're both ancient so why would they even care.'

'Dunno,' replied Tuppence. 'You never know with old people. They kind of want things both ways.  One minute my uncles are demanding comfy seats and help lifting their shopping bags and the next they're annoyed because I keep telling them they might as well go to Switzerland cos they're past it.  But age is still no excuse for them having problematic attitudes and ignoring current tech.  I'm going over to Tupfinder Towers to ask the T-G. about some other stuff now.  Want to come along?'

'Sure.  Is he sort of like an oracle?  Because I want to quit my job but I don't know if it's the right time,  I need some advice from a sage or something.  I'm not earning enough from Onlyfans and - oops!'  Alexa glanced quickly at Tuppence,  who was gritting his teeth and staring determinedly at the horizon. 

Next time - Tuppence and Alexa enter the strange world of Tupfinder Towers